I have a lot of ideas that I want to really get implemented in sebistar.net. I imagine it being a hybrid of Python and Java code. The Java code is more experimental than anything as I am learning about Java web services and such. I’ll likely write the web services in Python first and then later on see how well they do as Java web services later.

So here’s my general goals.

• Create a unified sebistar.net login
• Create a userprofile system for sebistar.net
• Provide an OpenID Service for all sebistar.net logins
• Create a pluggable Portal system that allows users to publish various microdata about themselves. Some examples of microdata I want are as follows:
  • Mood
  • Current Music
  • Local weather data (pulled from web rather than published by user of course)
  • Blogroll (again aggregated from web not pub’d by user)
  • Away status
  • IM statuses
• Create a publishing system to publish documents to the web
• Create a blog system from publishing system
• Create an email interface

Of course all of these things need to be fully modular and should be as decoupled as possible from eachother so that heavy changes to one system does not affect the other. The obvious tightly coupled systems would be portal to profile and blog to publishing. But those I feel are OK to couple like that.

The login system is already started and I’m having fun with it thus far. Overall logins are pretty easy but I’m making sure to do them to be modular and callable by any other module in the site without knowing the details of it at all. As far as any other module should be concerned, the login module should provide exactly three services: Check if a user is logged in, log a user in, and check the user’s privilege levels in a generic way.

I’ll likely write the OpenID service myself rather than using the existing OpenID library because I want to know exactly how it works, as the idea intrigues me. Then I’ll be able to use it for things like LiveJournal logins and such.

I purchased a 10/100/1000 (gigabit) ethernet card a few days ago, made by US Robotics. It was cheap. I don’t care. :-) I’m not putting it in anything important so I don’t need to spend $80 on an Intel or 3com card.

But I was reading the fine print on the packaging and it makes this claim:

For over 25 years, U.S. Robotics has helped millions of users get on the internet with powerful, innovative products.

Gosh. I bet a lot of people are going to be surprised that the internet has been around that long.
:-)

This was a very funny signature I saw reading the SATLUG email list..

A: Yes.
> Q: Are you sure?
>> A: Because it reverses the logical flow of conversation.
>>> Q: Why is top posting annoying in email?

Bahahah. Quite nice. It’s why I seriously hate it when people top-quote email. Stupid Microsoft and their ass-backwards ways. Argh. Makes people like me have to put up with top-quoters who simply don’t know any better because outlook “does it that way”.

On another note, I upgraded to Wordpress 2.0 and I’m really liking it thus far. The rich editor has a bit of work to be done, but I love the new layout of the admin side.

Though someday I think I still wanna write my own. :D

WIPE: Wal-Mart Is Pure Evil

I will never shop there ever, ever, ever again.

Never.

Happy Holidays Everyone!

I hope that everyone has had a wonderful holiday. Thus far I definitely have.

I got…

• BFG GeForce 6600GT-OC video card, which super-pwnz my old 5200FX.
• Learning Java, Third Edition which I am needing for my new job.
• Practical RDF for my fun Semantic Web ventures.
• Some various cookware stuff.
• Some various lotion stuff and such.
• $50 gift certificate to ThinkGeek.com
• A scented oil diffuser
• And a microfiber screen cleaner towel.

Woohoo! And it’s really nice to spend time with family too. I wish I could make it to see my own parents in Illinois, but maybe soon.

I refuse. I used to love gaim. I still loved Gaim 1.50. But after what I learned about how Sean Egan has completely shit on the gaim-vv developers is just obscene. I am saddened by it.

It’s been proposed that gaim developers should fork gaim away from it’s current developers. While that’s fine and dandy, it overall causes a rift in it’s users, which in turn causes a rift in it’s support, which causes a rift in it’s adoptability by distributions and even corporations who want a single unified product. Emacs forked several times and is now a ‘mostly’ compatable set of several different projects. Each different. But in the long run people ending up saying that they wished they had feature A from project X.X and feature B from project X.Y, and they either don’t get it, or create fork X.Z and incorporate both. Either way it’s sad and annoying.

It always reminds me why projects should not have head developers.

I feel very bad for the city of New Orleans. What a shame. :-/ I won’t ramble on about it though because the news is doing a good job of that already.

I keep forgetting to write in this thing. Kinda silly, because I wanted to write in it every day. I think I just need a good routine. Yep.

Anyway, I’ll be going to Radio Shack later tonight to find photoresistors for my new robot project that I’ve been devising. Thus far it’s going to be an autonomous photophobic/phototropic robot that will seek out light using four directional sensors. It should be a really neat project. I’m not certain whether I will be building my own robot base, or using a tank kit from a local RC toy store. I’m going to have to see if any of the kits are worthwhile or even available around here.

I’ll be using a PIC18F258 microcontroller to be the brains of it. I chose this since it’s rather “beefy”, it has 10 10-bit A/D converters, and well, I have 4 of them laying around. :)

More to come!

Yeah. So I got this spam in my inbox.

The subject reads

“No exams, no classes, no books, just a digree”

Bahaha. Looks like he got a digree at his own company.

Now, onto the eggs. I just got a new phone. The Motorola V330. It has integrated bluetooth and can do internet access and mp3 ringtones. Wee fun. I needed a new phone. I had my last one for almost 4 years, and it was dying badly.

James Doohan, aka Montgomery Scott, died today at 5:30am in his home in Washington.

BBC News announcement.

Maybe some day, in one of his next lives, he may really be a starship engineer.

One can only hope.

Ugh. Not enough sleep. I am currently powered solely by caffeine.

This sucks.

On another note, I find it quite enjoyable that this blog works so well.

Now I just need to add in an OpenID server and consumer. Argh. More work. :P

I hate Sunday.

My head hurts. We discovered this neat used bookstore where they also double as a cat adoption place. They let the cats roam around and stuff. Pretty neat place.

And a gaming shop with old AD&D 1e/2e books. Woot.

Well, it seems as though I have started to ramble already.

This will hopefully be a much better effort than my livejournal was.

Yes.